Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 7...

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 7 to 16.

         Attention is a finite civic resource repeatedly commandeered by commercial actors. Airports, sidewalks, and feeds are saturated with solicitations that commandeer our gaze, while self-styled disrupters prospect in the “private headspace” to monetize it. In such a regime, we have traded away silence, the felt condition of not being addressed. [I] Like clean air, absence of address enables thinking; its depletion makes agency brittle. Without norms, the market colonizes what used to be ambient refuge and calls it innovation.

         Against this drift, Matthew Crawford proposes imagining an attentional commons – shared conditions that shield people from incessant capture. If attention were treated as a commons, it would demand stewardship rather than perpetual extraction. This reframing invites governance: constraints on unsolicited displays, default opt-outs, and duties of care for those who engineer attention-traps. [II] When we honor silence as infrastructure, we make room for thinking together, not merely scrolling alone, and we civilize the terms on which persuasion meets the passerby.

        Crawford traces the genealogy of distraction to the auctioning of public vistas and the legitimation of constant address; he first mapped this in “How We Lost Our Attention.” [III] His argument is less nostalgia than institutional design: without limits, the loudest bidder captures the square. At the Virginia Festival of the Book (March 18, Charlottesville), he will discuss these stakes with media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, connecting everyday bombardment with the ethics of designing environments fit for democratic attention.

        Practical implications follow. Cities can expand ad-free corridors and regulate attention-harvesting in transit; schools and libraries can prioritize quiet zones; platform defaults can privilege consent over capture. Registration remains free for the evening event, though seats are limited, and back issues of “Minding Our Minds” are modestly priced. [IV] None of this abolishes persuasion; it merely rebalances it so citizens can refuse address without penalty – the precondition for judgment rather than frictionless compliance.

(Adapted from The Hedgehog Review, “Toward an Attentional Commons,” and Matthew Crawford’s commentary)

Question 7. The word monetize in paragraph 1 mostly means ______.

A. socially performative                                B. painfully obsolete

C. commercially exploitable                                D. marginally lawful

Question 8. Where in the passage does the following sentence best fit?

Civic norms, from noise ordinances to ad-free carriages, already instantiate small-scale guardianship of public attention.

A. [I]                        B. [II]                                C. [III]                        D. [IV]

Question 9. Which of the following best summarises paragraph 1?

A. Commercial actors commandeer finite attention, eroding silence that makes thinking possible and rebranding intrusion as innovative progress.

B. Digital platforms eliminated attention scarcity, leaving public spaces clearer and empowering citizens to ignore commercial appeals easily.

C. Self-styled disrupters colonize private headspace, turning ambient refuge into a market and treating silence as expendable surplus to be strip-mined.

D. The rise of disrupters has improved civic life because their messages are more informative than old advertising in transit hubs.

Question 10. What does “silence” enable, according to the passage?

A. Focused, unpressured thought and judgment        B. Faster shopping decisions online

C. More persuasive corporate messaging                D. Cheaper public transit funding

Question 11. According to paragraph 2, treating attention as a commons would entail ______?

A. assigning duties that limit unsolicited capture in shared civic environments

B. encouraging platforms to maximize engagement metrics at all costs always

C. abolishing persuasion entirely from both markets and politics worldwide forever

D. relying on personal willpower rather than any institutional limits whatsoever

Question 12. What will the festival conversation likely examine, per paragraph 3?

A. How design choices in media environments shape democratic attention and everyday autonomy

B. Why advertising should be banned from all cities without any exceptions whatsoever

C. Which app delivers the most notifications during a typical weekday morning commute

D. Whether ticket prices rise because bookstores depend on registration fees for funding

Question 13. The phrase the square in paragraph 3 refers to ______.

A. public space        B. literal plaza                C. marketplace        D. book fair

Question 14. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A. The author implies that policy tools already exist – like noise and ad restrictions – that can be expanded to protect shared attention without banning persuasion altogether.

B. Because attention is infinite online, any attempt to regulate advertising would inevitably collapse democratic debate and make citizens less informed than they currently are today.

C. Treating silence like infrastructure means eliminating smartphones from cities and requiring residents to live without digital media for most of their daily routines at all.

D. Because events require registration, the text suggests they are monetized like ads and therefore contradict the very idea of an attentional commons in every way.

Question 15. Which of the following best paraphrases the underlined sentence in paragraph 2?

A. Considering attention a shared good would oblige institutions to manage it responsibly instead of continuously mining it for profit and engagement.

B. If attention were private property, companies should maximize returns by any means including louder ads and default notifications without consent.

C. Treating attention as commodity would justify perpetual harvesting, leaving stewardship unnecessary and viewers responsible for resisting whatever captures gaze.

D. Seeing attention as aesthetic experience would prioritize art funding and cultural festivals while ignoring political economy of advertising in policy.

Question 16. Which of the following best summarises the passage?

A. The text argues for an attentional commons, urging civic rules to preserve silence against intrusive commercialization across platforms, streets, and institutions.

B. It celebrates disruptive advertising as modern art that revitalizes public spaces and boosts creativity during commutes and shopping trips.

C. The passage announces event logistics and pricing without presenting substantive claims about attention or persuasion ethics.

D. It explains how attention scarcity is solved by unlimited feeds that neutralize advertising through smart personalization and optional silencing features.